6 days before launch, Xbox breaks Hellblade 2’s long marketing silence with a 5-minute recap of the first game

Merciless



Six days from launch, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 has a new promotional video out that breaks down the story from the first game.

Ninja Theory’s silence in recent weeks around one of the biggest upcoming Xbox Series X games of the year was starting to raise some concerns, but fear not, the dam has broken and we now have a big old… story recap. You know, so you’re up to speed on what’s going on before the sequel comes out. I mean, it’s something.

Despite chatter online, it’s not as if Ninja Theory hasn’t been marketing its game at all. The studio’s been drip-feeding little nuggets here and there on its Twitter account every day since May 1, but they’ve been small nuggets. Like Happy Meal small. For example, two updates were just reposts of influencers promoting the game. Another was an image of Ninja Theory’s performance capture studio. Like I said, small nuggets.

There’s also been some press interviews and hands-on previews in recent weeks, but otherwise both Xbox and Ninja Theory have been conspicuously quiet. This new story recap is arguably the biggest promotional drop since January’s Xbox Developer Direct four months ago. Again, considering we’re just days away from launch, eyebrows are rightfully being raised.

For what it’s worth, Ninja Theory studio head Dom Matthews spoke to this exact issue on Wednesday’s episode of the Kinda Funny podcast (timestamped here), but he pretty much entirely brushed the whole thing off by saying, in so many words, he’s just focused on the push to release and hopes the game will speak for itself.

“My focus has just been heads down, let’s get this done,” Matthews said. “I’ve always believed that games can be art, and you can take creative risks, and if you make something that’s compelling, people are going to want to play it, and people are going to want to enjoy it, and I maintain that fully.”

I’m still cautiously optimistic in Ninja Theory’s ability to stick the landing here. I’m a fan of the first game and the sequel sounds like a big step forward despite its short runtime (around eight hours). Only time will tell whether it’ll land with fans of the first game only or find a wider audience in Xbox’s player base.

For now, here are the best Xbox Series X games.